The Class of 1959 did not, generationally speaking, grow up with social media. Probably just as well. Every so often, one of the social media accounts that survive my retirement (despite best efforts to get rid of it) is Linked In, which from time to time alerts me to job opportunities that seem to match my profile. This very morning, LinkedIn informed me of an opening as a special agent in the foreign language division of the FBI — for which, it said, I would be a perfect fit! Who knew?
There is, however, one corner of the social media landscape that I find useful, besides YouTube, my go-to destination for everything musical. It is Substack, home to many opinionated and entertaining people, including, as it happens, our very own Packer Wilbur. A Davenport resident as an undergraduate, Packer ran a successful investment business in Southport, Ct. and spent years traveling the world. Always interested in domestic and foreign policy, he has now put his thoughts on paper at packerwilbur.substack.com. His pieces are diligently researched, evidence-based, clearly written, and — spoiler alert — manifestly not enthusiastic about Mr. Trump. I found his essays on immigration, wind power and the budget deficit particularly well argued.
BTW, if there are other substackers in our class out there, let me know, and I’ll give them the rocket-fueled PR boost this column provides, free of charge… like the boost I am now about to give to our old friend Austin Hoyt.
A prolific, much-decorated producer of documentaries for public broadcasting, now retired on Buzzards Bay, Austin has a new book, “The Haunting Nahanni.” It’s quite something, as much for what went into it as for the story it tells. What went into it was Austin’s astonishing perseverance. The summer after we graduated in 1959, Austin, an outdoors guy long intrigued by Canada’s rugged Northwest Territories, decided to canoe and kayak 130 miles of the Nahanni River, an enchanting but tricky beast with a fearsome reputation. At least a dozen people who braved that river, prospectors, trappers and so on, drowned or got lost or bushwhacked, in any case never came back. Austin did prodigious research, revisited the landscape, interviewed old-timers and wrote three chapters of a book on the Nahanni and its morbid past, got nowhere with publishers, filed away acres of notes and photos, and then, a few years ago, exhumed the lot and resumed the tale (including an inventory of the people who died). The paperback is yours on Amazon by entering the title or the name Austin Hoyt in the search field.
Also on Amazon is a venerable book on management by Davis Fogg, whose multifaceted life as a musician (remember the Shire-Fogg ensemble?), writer and executive has not got the ink it merits in this column. By way of remedy, we call your attention to his award-winning nature photography, a sampling now up on our class website, with much more to be found on foggphoto.com. The photos are amazing. Davis and his wife live in Florida, where both are battling health issues.
Bill Carney, Yale Law ’62 and retired senior professor at Emory School of Law in Atlanta, sends word of the grand opening of the William and Jane Carney Center for Business and Transactional Law at Emory as well as a $6 million challenge grant in his name and his late wife’s , who died a little over a year ago at age 90. The gift is the largest in the law school’s history; the new center is aimed at strengthening the school’s faculty and curriculum in business and other fields “neglected during progressive times.”
Ed Greenberg reports that unless the Class Council says no, an unlikely event, we will continue to underwrite the 1959 Fund for Excellence at Hopper College, which for years has awarded individual students at Calhoun (now Hopper) $500 stipends to help pay for career-enhancing meetings, interviews, summer internships etc they could not otherwise afford. Our Treasurer, Al Atherton, confirms that we have money in the bank to again provide the customary $4500 to this very worthwhile program.
Four departures, summarized briefly here with much fuller accounts on our class website.
Gerry Jones, who died in Vermont in March, was Mr. Everything when we overlapped at Andover and enjoyed a no less stellar Yale career including near-All American status as a hockey goaltender. Following two years in the Navy and three at Yale Law School, he became a founding partner of Richards and O’ Neil in New York before leaving Greenwich and settling in Vermont. His cheerful demeanor and enthusiasm for good deeds undiminished by retirement, Gerry served on Andover’s board of trustees and as chairman of Vemont’s Nature Conservancy. He was predeceased by his wife Emily and is survived by three daughters.
Peter Platt passed away in San Francisco on March 27 of congestive heart failure. A Michigan lad who came east on a scholarship, Peter served with me as an editor on the News, graduated cum laude and then from Yale Law. In 1962 he moved to San Francisco where he became a partner at Brobeck, Phleger and Harrison, and, later, at Coudert Brothers. He retired to La Jolla with his second wife, Kristine, who survives him along with two sons from his first marriage. He was a sports fan wherever he went, first the 49ers in San Francisco and then the Padres in San Diego, also a devoted student of classical music, serving on symphony boards in both cities.
For sheer glamour, it’s hard to touch the life and lifestyle of the late Peter Elebash, who died in March in West Palm Beach. Pete came to Yale from Alabama via Choate, joined Book and Snake and ROTC, and played trumpet in a Dixieland band. Under the tutelage of a highflying Georgia cousin named LeGrand, Pete became what he called a ” gentleman’s sportsman” with foxhunting in Ireland, game shooting in England, even bobsledding. Somewhere along the line he developed a real talent for marketing high-end real estate, which he did in both Millbrook, NY. and the Palm Beaches, meanwhile immersing himself in the world of polo and rising high enough in the amateur ranks to play alongside Argentinian pros. He is survived by three sons and by Jane, his second wife of 25 years, with whom he shared retirement in Palm Beach and, in his later years, an active role in Family Church.
As this column was going to press, we learned from Sarah Davies of the death in April of her father and our classmate, Gordon Kenneth Davies, in Chapel Hill, from Alzheimer’s. A very good amatuer marathoner and determined mountain climber, Gordon served in the Navy and worked for IBM after Yale, then pivoted to earn a Master’s and Ph.D in religion, also from Yale. He spent most of his career as an educator, largely in Virginia. He was a “convinced Quaker” and an active member of the Richmond Friends Meeting. Survivors include Sarah, various stepchildren and Betsy Brinson, his wife and life partner of more than 50 years.